


The Alphabet

by queen_ypolita



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: 1000-2000 words, M/M, Post-Book, list format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 01:18:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/queen_ypolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post-book, with Laurie at Oxford; he's bored, so he's writing a list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Alphabet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lanyon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanyon/gifts).



> Written as Yuletide treat.

A is for Alec. Laurie had initially resented the interfering, but forgave him easily after the night. Sometimes he thinks he is not the type to become firm friends with his lover's ex-lover, but it's hardly the strangest thing that has ever happened to him.

B is for Bridstow. Sometimes, with a jolt, Laurie remembers how he never wanted to come to the hospital in Bridstow. Since then, Bridstow has become home, filled with warmth and joy.

C is for the charioteer imagery in the _Phaedrus_ that Laurie still loves and finds very apt for the way the human mind works.

D is for Dunkirk, and all the chaos and confusion that have long since become blurred in Laurie's memories, but sometimes he wishes he'd remember the moment on the deck with Ralph.

E is for the essay Laurie should be writing right now.

F is for friendships that have come out of the war; Laurie is grateful for all of them.

G is for the Green Man, a pub that he and Ralph occasionally visit in Bridstow. It's near Ralph's flat, and there are one or two regulars who can often fill Ralph in with sea gossip. They don't call it gossip, of course.

H is for hospitals that Laurie never wants to see again, now that he's been discharged and pronounced well. But that's hardly surprising after six or so months mostly filled with pain and operations.

I is for the Isis where Laurie used to go punting, on sunny afternoons before the war, with Charles and other friends. In his memories, all those afternoons are sunny and warm; that's the way with memories. It's almost like all of them took place in another world.

J is for the joy that he feels when reunited with Ralph.

K is for the knee. Laurie is grateful for still having it, and the leg below it, and all the operations and physiotherapy he's had to make it better. And it _is_ much better, but after all he's been through with it, Laurie will never take any part of his body for granted any more.

L is for letters that Laurie receives from Ralph when they have to be apart, like when Laurie is at Oxford. No one else who writes to him manages to make his or her letters to him sound just like they are in person, but Ralph does. Laurie always waits until he has quiet uninterrupted time to read them three times in one go, because it takes at least three times to move from the pleasure of having a letter from him to actually taking in the contents, and start drafting a reply in his mind.

M is for Mrs Morrison who cleans Ralph's flat in Bridstow and worships the ground he walks on because, she says, he resembles her youngest son who died early on in the war, but terrifies Laurie out of his mind.

N is for the narrow escape they had the night they fought about Andrew and Alec had sent him back to Ralph. He doesn't want to think about how narrow it was, he wants to focus on here and now and the two of them together, for good, but there's a sense that the escape was a little too narrow for comfort. He doesn't think Ralph would decide on it again, but he would think less of himself for having decided on it once.

O is for Oxford that feels so changed now that war has pulled so many of the young men away. One no longer feels the very air buzzing with intellectual curiosity of slow afternoons, friends, and unexpected encounters. There is a different sense of urgency in those who remain and Laurie doesn't feel part of it, trying to catch up with his work in time to sit his examinations.

P is for partings that there have been too many of, and with the war still going with no end in sight, there will be many more.

Q is for the quiet of the nights with no raids when people get to sleep in their own beds, only they cannot sleep because they're expecting a raid. Laurie used to find it odd, but not any more, as he is one of them. It's only when he's with Ralph that he's able to sleep peacefully through the night.

R is for raids that are wreaking destruction all over the country. Places that Laurie knows well have changed beyond recognition as a result of them, and although he's used to waking up to them these days, he still worries about them. And when they're apart, he worries about Ralph getting caught out in them too.

S is for the soap that Ralph prefers. It's getting harder to find, but Laurie does his best to track down some for himself, because the smell makes him feel closer to Ralph when he's at Oxford.

T is for Trinity term, which is approaching all too soon and bringing his finals with it.

U is for U boats out at sea that could sink Ralph's ship once he's given another command (and the way things are going, he will, missing fingers or not, because so many ships are going down).

V is for victory that seems so far away despite the long months of war already behind them. It is talked about wistfully in conversations, and dangled high as a shining prize for putting up with current hardships by politicians giving speeches on the wireless

W is for the war, and all the conflicting feeling Laurie has about it. It has taken him to places he wouldn't have gone had it not been for the war, and introduced him to people he wouldn't have otherwise met, it has maimed him for life, allowed him to witness moments of quiet heroism, and it keeps threatening the lives of his friends.

X is for the X rays that Laurie had taken at hospital, the ones that over time showed the progress of his healing, which probably eventually saved his leg for him.

Y is for the yellow glass vase on the windowsill in a house that Laurie often walks past when he's in Oxford. It looks non-descript on some days, on other days it shines in the light and fills the world with a brightness that weirdly gives Laurie hope that he and Ralph and his other friends are going to emerge out of the war alive and well and embark their normal lives.

Z is for the zeal with which Mrs Morrison dusts and polishes and sweeps carpets, as if she was waging war on anything that makes Ralph's flat look lived-in.


End file.
